In a field of medicine, pathology, or the like, there has been proposed a system that digitizes an image of a cell, a tissue, an organ, or the like of a living body, that is obtained by an optical microscope, to examine the tissue or the like by a doctor or a pathologist or diagnose a patient based on the digitized image.
For example, Japanese Patent Application Laid-open No. 2009-37250 (hereinafter, referred to as Patent Document 1) discloses a method in which an image optically obtained by a microscope is digitized by a video camera with a CCD (charge coupled device), a digital signal is input to a control computer system, and the image is visualized on a monitor. A pathologist performs examination while watching the image displayed on the monitor (see, for example, paragraphs [0027] and [0028] and FIG. 5 of Patent Document 1). Generally, such a system is called a virtual microscope.
Incidentally, in the case of the past virtual microscope disclosed in Patent Document 1, for moving a display range of an image or zooming an image by a user, a user has to repeatedly perform operations of dragging a mouse or rotating a scroll wheel thereof, for example. However, an image used in the virtual microscope has a large size of 50×50 (Kpixel: kilopixel), for example. For this reason, to thoroughly observe such an image is a very hard task for a user. In particular, a pathologist performs such a task all day long. If the operations are troublesome, they may be stressful. There is fear that a change in pathological tissue that should be found may be missed, which may cause a misdiagnosis.
In view of the above-mentioned circumstances, it is desirable to provide an information processing apparatus, an information processing method, and a program therefor capable of reducing user's operations necessary for moving a display range of an image in a virtual microscope and make an observation task efficient.